edward snowden, the nsa. what's going on with all of this? you know, there's some new polling to take this kind of bigger picture. well, i guess i'll start with snowden because he has been a fascinating character and a lot of people have said that he himself and his actions have really distracted from the debate that he wanted to have over the nsa and over the leaks that he put out there. in some respects i think that's true, but when you look at the fact that public opinion is actually moving in the direction of questioning government surveillance and we are having bigger conversations, i think he was successful in starting that conversation. now one thing i'll point out with that polling moving in that direction is i think that polling can change very quickly if you have another sort of security threat, if you have another incident. and that's why you see politicians, even politicians like president obama who came into office pledging transparency and pledging to be very different than president bush. i think that's why you see him going in